Facebook Is Developing Artificial Intelligence That Offers Trend Advice To Make You More ‘Fashionable’ – elle.com

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In the early days of Facebook, the social media platform aimed to create a global community of users unified by similar interests and contacts. Now, it wants to help you improve your fashion know-how.

The social media platform recently announced that it is building an artificial intelligence (AI) system that offers fashion advice and helps a user change their outfit to make it more 'fashionable.'

So, how does it work? The system titled Fashion+++ uses a deep image neural network to identify clothes and offer subtle alterations on what a user should remove, add or swap. It can also recommend ways to adjust a piece of clothing, such as tucking in a shirt or rolling up the sleeves, Facebook explains.

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So, in the words of Queer Eyes Tan France, Facebook's Fashion+++ aims to elevate your look.

On the definite plus side, the technology heroes sustainability, prioritising advising users how to make garments they already own more on trend, rather than suggesting they need to buy something new.

Fashion++ focuses specifically on minimal edits, suggesting adjustments that are more realistic and practical than buying an entirely new outfit, an explanation of Facebook+++ reads on the social media platforms website.

The system uses a discriminative fashionability classifier that is trained on thousands of publicly available images of outfits that have been judged to be stylish.

On the other hand though, giving Facebook the reins to appraise your personal choices might seem unsettling.

Daisy Murray, writer at ELLE UK, sees the benefits of Facebook+++ for the environment and consumer's self-esteem, but is weary of its advice.

'We all know that the drive to buy more, instead of playing with the garments we already have in our extensive wardrobes, is really harming the planet,' she says.

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'Everyone deserves to feel self-assured and empowered in what they wear when they walk out the door. Any efforts to help people feel more confident, whilst working with the clothes they already have, are in my books fantastic.

'My one concern is the potential limitations of the AI - personal style cannot be learned. A handy tip here or there is great, but we don't want to look homogenised. Only a person can bring their personality to what they wear.'

In other words, many will be cautious about letting a machine dictate their personal choices.

News of Facebooks latest technological venture comes amid growing adoption of technology in the fashion industry.

In recent years, Tommy Hilfiger has sent a solar-powered phone-charging jacket down the runway and Net-A-Porter has experimented with technology that scans your data for information on upcoming events and tailors its fashion suggestion.

Meanwhile, digital supermodels are now fronting campaigns for Balmain and Ellesse and digital collections worn among influencers on Instagram are increasingly becoming the norm, rather than the anomaly.

The future of fashion is officially here.

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Facebook Is Developing Artificial Intelligence That Offers Trend Advice To Make You More 'Fashionable' - elle.com